What to do about a fake or defamatory review in Australia
By ReputationKiln Editorial · Published
Australia's law is relatively friendly to a claimant, but you still start with the free platform routes, document, flag with evidence, respond calmly, before anything legal. On defamation, small businesses, those with fewer than ten employees, can sue, and since 2021 reforms a claimant must show serious harm. Truth and honest opinion are defences, so a genuine bad review stands. Fake reviews can also be misleading or deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law, which gives you a second angle, especially where a competitor is behind them, with the regulator able to act.
The routes, in order
A letter of demand to the reviewer, and where appropriate a takedown notice to the platform citing both defamation and the consumer law, is the usual first move. A defamation claim follows where the review is false, defamatory and harmful enough to justify the cost. One important nuance: a 2022 High Court decision narrowed when a platform is treated as a publisher of linked content, so do not assume a notice to the platform alone creates liability; you usually still pursue the reviewer first. Australian advisers consistently warn against over-reacting to minor or fair criticism, because action can amplify it.
Extortion, and the limit
A demand for money backed by a threat of bad reviews is blackmail or extortion under state crimes Acts, carrying heavy penalties, and you treat it as a crime: do not pay, document, report to the platform and police. Note that, in Australia, threatening to report the person to police as a lever can itself be an offence, so let the authorities handle it. The limit: regulator action targets patterns, not your single review, and the court route is for serious harm. Read the panic-tax page before paying any "reputation" firm.
Sources
- Australia high court held by majority that merely providing a search-result hyperlink to defamatory material is not publication of it, narrowing earlier search-engine liability. — Google LLC v Defteros [2022] HCA 27. https://www.hcourt.gov.au/cases-and-judgments/judgments/judgments-1998-current/google-llc-v-defteros · checked 2026-06-04